In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming; PHASE II

[Wrynn]

Oh look, oh my star is fading

She doesn't like it, this world of fire and brimstone, and the moment she hits the ground, she wrinkles her nose. But she will push through, she is of Scorch and Hestoni, of stronger stock than to give up now. She may be sweet and innocent, but she is a lollipop with a core of iron.

gail gail gail, by the sea, a mile off, gail gail gail

She has landed by a stream, and although the stream boils, it's lucky for her: she's lived all her short life within a jungle, she knows how to walk within one, and she knows that all jungle streams, inevitably, must lead to a larger body of water. by the sea, a mile off. Follow the stream, and she should find it.

Following the stream is no easy task, but she has the advantage of youth on her side, and when the ground cracks beneath her she can scramble away. The air is hot like sulfur and death, and it is unpleasant to walk. But it is not the conditions themselves that bother her the most: she can feel something in the air around her, a thickness and heaviness that she's never felt before. She's too young to know it, but it is the thickness of death.

Without warning, a tentacle erupts from the jungle to her left. She is on edge from dodging the erupting ground, enough that she's able to avoid the worst of it, but her dodge still sends her reeling. She slides towards a crack in the earth, feeling the heat of it start to singe her hind end – and in the nick of time her feet find purchase and she scrambles away from the fissure.

She did not notice how the tentacle grabbed at the open air, like a hand snatching out and coming up empty.

So she does not expect it to come again, a grabbing tentacle as thick as her foreleg. It is swift and it grabs her quickly, wrapping around her small barrel like an ersatz girth. Her reaction is pure instinct: she reaches around (much like an angry horse nipping at a rider who tightens that ersatz girth) and bites, twisting her body as much as she can in the meantime, making herself as slippery as she can.

Her teeth find purchase on the tentacle, and it drops her abruptly. Where it grabbed her, the flesh is burnt, as though she'd been touched by a light acid (not burned through to the muscle, just blistered and uncomfortable) but blessedly her teeth are fine. Smarter this time, knowing it will come back, she scrambles urgently across the broken ground, dodging and weaving, desperate to avoid another swipe.

Little does she know she's running right towards it.

She doesn't realize, not until the ground opens into a deep chasm beneath her, and she comes skidding to a stop, barely avoiding the edge. She throws herself to the side just in time to avoid the punch-grab of the tentacle arm. Falling back on her instincts, the genetics of horses so many thousand years made prey, she manages to catch glimpses of the creature that attacks her as she continues to dodge.

It is huge, large enough to occupy the entirety of the meadow back in Beqanna, far larger even than the monster (the friend?) she'd made back in space. And it seems to be attacking many different horses, or at least doing many different things, because tentacles of various sizes are erupting from it constantly. Not only that, the tentacles sometimes detach themselves, as though to continue the chase freed from the large body.

That body is a black carapace made of nothing that she recognizes. It could be nothing but fog, or it could be some kind of exoskeleton – the tentacles seem to be armored and jointed like the exoskeleton of a pill bug, with interlocking rings of hard armor. Hard, but brittle, she thinks, remembering how her teeth were able to pierce the shell, and how once they did, the tentacle had retracted.

There is one saving grace: it has only one eye. The eye moves freely around its body, able to appear on any part of the black surface, but seeming to roll aimlessly until right before it is ready to strike. Then it pauses, entirely still, and launches out a tentacle in one direction only. It is capable of striking quite quickly, of pausing its gaze and launching faster than she can see, but it doesn't seem to be capable of launching while it is looking.

And perhaps, if it needs to be looking, it needs to see in order to attack.

She decides to test her theory by hiding. This inhospitable world has kindly obliged with a particularly handy spot where the ruined ground has tossed itself against a larger boulder topped with a long-dead tree, the effect something like sea spray upon the rocks, but with a sheet of earth rather than a sheet of water. She waits until the eye is on the other side of the large body and then leaps behind it with a child's alacrity, hoping her movement remained unseen.

Silently, she presses her body to the rock, making no noise and barely daring to breathe. She should know soon, it's only been a few moments between tentacle attacks previously. The wounds where the tentacle had grabbed her are beginning to sting now as her small body drips with the exertion of her dodges. She hopes that’s it – for all she knows, this creature is poisoning her, or worse.

The seconds tick by and the attack doesn't come. She listens closely and hears what sounds like tentacles grabbing in far-off locations, but none of them seem to come past here. She is hidden, it would seem. And hiding works, it would seem. Whether noise attracts the creature or not she can't say. But maybe she can find out.

She rears up, scraping her tiny hooves against the stone boulder in front of her. She's still entirely hidden, invisible to its eye, but making enough noise that she should be easily heard. She is still and quiet then, like a coiled spring, waiting to see if a tentacle strikes.

When none does, she breathes a comical sigh of relief, loud and audible even against the muted sounds of doom that occupy this ruined world. All she has to do, then, is make it the remaining distance without being seen. She estimates that the wormhole should be more or less on the other side of this gigantic chasm, so if she can travel around the edge of the hole, she should be set.

That is, until she hears the crunching of the leaves behind her, approaching from the other direction, away from the beach, but walking toward her.

She spots it immediately, a creature walking slowly. It walks on only two legs, but must be easily twice her height. It has no face that she can see, just a million mouths, covering its surface entirely. It drips saliva as it comes, a terrifyingly thin creature, tall and thin enough that it waves in the wind. It is unbothered by the tentacles, she notes, and she decides it must be in league with that other creature. She watches it for a moment, putting slightly more distance between herself and the rock (but remaining hidden) to see if this creature will react.

It changes trajectory as soon as she moves, but it does not change speed. It's a timer, a pace horse, and she knows in her bones that if it catches her, she's done.

No big deal, then – she just has to carefully jump between hiding places to get around this crater, while making sure she does it fast enough to avoid this slow-moving doom.

No big deal.

She identifies her first goal, an outcrop that should be just reachable if she leaps as long and low as she possibly can. She positions herself just at the edge of the rock, as close as she can get without revealing herself, and tries as best she can to see when the monster's eye rolls to the other side. And when it does, when she sees it crest over its head, she leaps, long and low.

She lands ungracefully, stumbling forward a bit and coming to her knees before quickly struggling to her feet. She is not terribly hurt, her knees are only slightly scratched with nothing broken, but she will have to be more careful next time. She checks the slow-moving creature – it continues to walk directly toward her, but its pace is still the same. She catches her breath for a moment, no tentacles – so far, so good.

She maintains this strategy, moving only when its eye is turned, hiding behind what cover she can find as she crosses this huge expanse. She moves as quickly as she can, keeping the slow-moving creature of a million mouths at bay.

Once she reaches the far edge, the jungle is thin, but the slow creature is catching up. She is dripping sweat, her breath coming in gasps, her wounds (both on her barrel and on her knees) burning. But she doesn't have time to think about that, not when she's so close.

She decides to make a run for it.

She bursts out from her hiding place, both creatures behind her now. She tears through the ruined jungle, heading for the beach that is so close she can almost taste it. It doesn't taste like sea air, but like steam, and as the trees break she can see that the ocean is boiling. She zigs and zags with a horse's dexterity, applying her tactical mind to avoid the tentacles that come reaching out. They are almost nonstop, as though desperate to stop her from reaching her destination.

gail gail gail, by the sea, a mile off, gail gail gail -- Her heart beats.

gail gail gail, by the sea, a mile off, gail gail gail -- In a flash, she sees that the slow walker too seems to feel the urgency – it is running now, tilted forward, its mouths sucking and grasping. She moves faster, it moves faster.

gail gail gail, by the sea, a mile off, gail gail gail -- But now the last wormhole is in sight, now it is almost over (a tentacle flashes past her, she barely dodging) –

And with a motion that is half leap and half fall, she is through the wormhole. Just her - no tentacles, no runners.

gail gail gail

wrynn